Finding Hope When Life Unravels

great grandmother’s china

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She was introduced to me as a stranger, this woman who shared the drive to a writer’s conference.

But within five miles we connected – as women often do when they share about their broken hearts, lifelong dreams and always always – their beloved children.

We discovered a common link as women betrayed by husbands in long-term marriages where the happily-ever-after morphed into legal paperwork and the dividing of household goods – in itself a sharing of suffering.

Who gets the family albums? The china great grandmother carefully transported from the old country to America – land of the free and home of the brave.

Women freed from the shackles of toxic relationships. Women who found their brave although it took us several decades.

We saw in each other the heart hidden under years of denial and co-dependency – how we had ignored the truth because we could not manage the raw stream of reality.

We connected through the pain, but shared the lifelong dream of writing. So after we finished baring our souls, we stopped for a refill of iced tea then concentrated on the positives of life.

She – a devotional writer with a quirky sense of humor I admired. My writing – more creative fiction with the trilogy of Reverend G and blog posts such as this one.

Both of us with degrees in education. She with a lifetime of teaching and a recent retirement. My focus on ministry and teaching women how to cope.

Another connecting point – both of us mothers of sons, proud of the men they had become, blessed because we made it through those adolescent years when the larvae of manhood simultaneously made us grit our teeth and laugh into our pillows.

Since that conference, we have shared several meals and the iced tea we both love, the large version for only a dollar at McDonald’s.

Then we found another connection in our love of the country. She – blessed with several acres where she plants gardens, decorates with bird houses and roams with her loyal dogs. My life currently stuck in limbo land, living in the city yet craving for sunsets without buildings and the solace of quiet labor.

Yet with all our emotional connections, the one fiber that spans any differences and winds itself through eternity is that we love the same God. Neither of us quite understanding why he allowed us to be members of the gray divorce club, yet both of us certain we will trust him with the rest of our lives.

Hope grows when we meet other pilgrims along the road of life and discover common connections, heart stirrings and reasons to pray for each other.

Then as we embrace our eternal connection, we no longer call each other strangers but instead lock hearts as family.